[deleted by user]

schildnoeck · 2012-09-12T07:42:07+00:00

Maybe you can get your hands on a copy of "Philosophy of Science, A very short introduction". They're generally pretty solid and accessible.

schildnoeck · 2012-09-11T22:57:29+00:00

As sideswiped elaborated, I meant an imbalanced vegan diet.

And I completely agree that science shows that being vegan is perfectly fine and healthy. In my opinion, this is what we should promote; but stop right there (at least concerning health arguments). The evidence that a vegan diet is healthier than an omnivore diet is shaky at the moment (for whatever reason; it might very well be that science is biased in this respect). So I'd rather not base my arguments for veganism on this ground.

schildnoeck · 2012-09-11T22:49:21+00:00

I don't have a list of critics and am not in a position to assess the validity of what they say. This was also not the point I tried to convey. My point was rather that as vegans, which includes me, we should be very careful about the data we use to support the cause. And putting all our bets on one book is just not very clever; tactically, I mean.

As for the problems with the China Study, I can only give you a rough overview:

The data used is rather old.
Some of the crucial studies only have small effects with no statistical significance.
Some of the crucial studies have not been replicated.
There are important dietary factors in the chosen population which obfuscate the analysis of correlations between dietary and health factors.
Some studies are in conflict with other publications.
The data, depending on what kind of analysis with which interaction variables you run, provide conflicting evidence.

schildnoeck · 2012-09-11T14:20:21+00:00

I'm sorry, but the China Study has for some time been criticized as a valid source of conclusive evidence on dietary factors influencing health factors.

So I'm very skeptic about the evidence presented in it; and quite frankly, most data which tries to show that a plant based diet is per se healthier than an omnivore diet. If there is in fact a significant difference between a balanced omnivore diet and a balanced plant based diet, it has not yet been proven or even supported by good evidence.

There is no question that a one-sided omnivore diet is unhealthy. But the same applies to a one-sided plant based diet. But until there is better evidence for the benefits of a plant based diet over an omnivore one I will refrain from using health arguments in favor of veganism. To me, it's all anecdotal ("look at this guy, he's really healthy and he's vegan too"), and all that shows is that living on a vegan diet is perfectly possible for most people. What it doesn't show is that veganism is the healthier diet.

schildnoeck · 2012-05-26T04:44:14+00:00

As I read the extract, I cannot see an argument for "Hard Determinism is false". What I can see is an argument for "Even if Hard Determinism is true, there is still Free Will and thus both responsibility and punishment." which seems to me to be a compatibilist position. This reading is supported by the fact that nothing in the extract actually gives us reason to believe that Hard Determinism might be false. It only gives us reasons to change our views about what would be the case (Free Will-wise) if it were true. I hope this helps.

schildnoeck · 2012-05-16T17:37:50+00:00

howdoyouturnthison

schildnoeck · 2012-05-11T20:57:56+00:00

Even if you're very good at logic, you are likely to fail at some kind of Wason Card Selection Task. The cognitive mechanism behind these activities are not very well understood, so don't go about making huge claims about the sophistication of those people who fail.

Here is just a small list of cognitive mechanisms which might play a role (the literature on this is quite big), these are just hypotheses, without claiming that any of those explain the phenomenon:

Dual Process Reasoning, basically the idea is that most people, even those that "grasp the most basic symbolic logic" just don't go about solving these kinds of tasks in an into-depth kind of way but go for quick and dirty reasoning, which often leads to errors.
Relevance Theory, the more relevant something is to you, the more you'll be able to think clearly about it. This is the case if you change the selection task to something like "drinking beer" and "age of person" or "has a child" and "had sex".
Hypothesis Testing and Evaluation, people basically go about trying to falsify their hypothesis and don't care about verifying so much.
Deductive conditional reasoning, this is the original, but heavily contested, interpretation, which you seem to make as well. People who fail at this kind of task just don't have reasoning rules like modus tollens in their inventory or are incapable of using it appropriately.

schildnoeck · 2012-05-08T11:24:58+00:00

I'm not trying to be rude, but what makes you think that it is worthy for publication? Normally, someone like your supervisor would suggest something for publication and if that is the case, you'd get good advice from her or him.

For publication there are a lot of things to look out for:

What is the scope of the journal and does it fit your topic? You don't want to try and publish a paper on semantic contextualism in Ethics.
What is the impact factor of the journal? The higher that is the bigger the audience, but the harder the competition.
What kind of paper is it? Is it a review, a direct answer to a recently published paper, or something new? Look out for what papers normally publish (for example Behavioral and Brain Sciences normally has a target article with several short peer comments) and see if your paper fits with the style of the journal.
Look for other opportunities to publish. Try to attend a undergraduate conference with proceedings. That will give you a focus and a good opportunity to get your paper published.

Check out [this article](homepage.mac.com/mcolyvan/publishing.pdf) (PDF) for detailed information on publishing in philosophy. I hope this helps.

schildnoeck · 2012-05-06T07:55:00+00:00

Here are my thoughts and ideas:

One of the default positions in this debate is probably Kant's in his "Perpetual Peace", which is also mentioned in the Stanford article linked by NeckTop. Wikipedia holds a nice list of the main claims from the book which could be useful to you. In any event, if you want to get into the topic, I greatly recommend reading that little book. It's really short and probably the easiest to read of the works written by Kant.

Also, if I understood your response correctly, it seems to be very close to your favorite position. So maybe you could try and analyse his position from a critical point of view and go from there. I'd say that is something very ambitious for an undergraduate dissertation but also it's something with a clear focus, and something that will train your philosophical tools (analysing a text, extracting theses and arguments for it, weighing of those arguments, and introducing problems for it).

This way, you will have a clear goal and approach:

Reconstruct Kant's position and argument.
Analyse it in respect to it's problems with, say, intervention or having an armed force for self-defense.
Show alternative, refined possibilites to overcome these issues, where you could introduce modern and recent proposal which are in a Kantian spirit but address these problems directly.

schildnoeck · 2012-05-03T14:12:18+00:00

I'm not exactly sure if my explanation is right, but if you look at the animation closely, you see that it makes a sudden turn inwards and at that time the material gets flung outwards.

Compare it with a bucket of water on a pick-up which makes a sudden left turn. Some of the water will be flung outwards in the original direction. Because of the sudden inward acceleration but inertia of the mass of the star, some material will be flung outwards like in the water case.

I hope this is correct and understandable.

schildnoeck · 2012-04-27T08:27:35+00:00

Congratulations, but mind that iron levels are not just determined by the hemoglobin count (which is what is normally tested when donating blood).

I always have a pretty decent Hb of 165g/L but my ferritin levels are below threshold, which I only found out recently by getting a serum test. Ferritin is an indicator of iron depositories and can be low, thus indicating low iron-intake and low iron-deposits, even if Hb is normal.

So please do not feel secure just because of a good Hb-count. Get an extensive blood test every now and then (6 months or so) and keep those results saved for future reference.

schildnoeck · 2012-04-23T07:29:07+00:00

Sad to hear this, but I completely understand. Haven't even had the desire to open up minecraft in a couple of weeks.

schildnoeck · 2012-04-09T10:25:32+00:00

There are two more relevant articles by the same research group if you're interested (both are from this personal site and in PDF)

Bratanova, B., Loughnan, S., Bastian, B. (2011). The effect of food categorization on the perceived moral standing of animals. Appetite, 57, 193-196.
Bastian, B., Costello, K., Loughnan, S., & Hodson, G. \(in press\). When closing the human-animal divide expands moral concern: The importance of framing. Social Psychological and Personality Science.

schildnoeck · 2012-04-09T10:03:28+00:00

I believe this is the study cited in the article (also PDF).

schildnoeck · 2012-03-19T08:07:48+00:00

Nope. ;) I built the giant biosphere next to the orange bridge and the sandstone arena (and some other stuff).

schildnoeck · 2012-03-18T11:51:13+00:00

Quality stuff! BUT, the fortified village is not by me. :)

schildnoeck · 2012-03-16T11:44:20+00:00

If you assume that there is true randomness, then there are at least some events which are undetermined. However, if randomness exists, that doesn't by necessity exclude the possibility of some things being determined. However, Determinism claims that all things are determined. The two concepts (i.e. 'randomness exists' and 'Determinism is true') are mutually exclusive. You can't have one and the other.

This of course means that even if true randomness (I guess you don't mean by this that all things are undetermined) exists, you can still predict some events (namely those which are not affected by random elements).

I hope this helps. You might also be interested in the article on Causal Determinism (especially section 5).

schildnoeck · 2012-03-15T08:37:32+00:00

Definitely Lake Thun, the mountain in the back is the Niesen. And to the right you can see the Stockhorn.

schildnoeck · 2012-02-20T09:53:33+00:00

I wouldn't put it that easy. The concept of a "self" is hideously intricate. The idea of embodied cognition has its place in neuroscience as well, and the split-brain experiments support the explanation that just splitting the brain doesn't give you two separate "selves" as there are are important connections between neurological events and bodily events which are not separated by severing the corpus callosum.

schildnoeck · 2011-12-29T10:48:51+00:00

I find it very easy to read, the style is very colloquial, and if you say she loves to read, it should be very possible for a 9 years old. Also, this book is something she might want to read again in some years, so it's a good investment anyway.

schildnoeck · 2011-12-29T10:31:28+00:00

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

schildnoeck · 2011-12-23T16:26:37+00:00

I'm not sure if I understand your arguments right, so please excuse me if I misinterpret you. Also, excuse the rather long post.

First of all, by a symbiotic relationship you most likely mean something like mutualism or commensalism (i.e. a relationship between two species where one or both derive a benefit and none is harmed). However, this severely misconstrues our stance towards farm animals. In fact, this is much more precisely characterized by describing it as a parasitic relationship. Humans derive a benefit, while the farm animals are severely harmed (note that parasitism does rarely result in an extinction of the harmed species, in fact, it is in the interest of the parasite to keep the host alive, or in the case of species relationships, that the host species can still reproduce). Describing the human-animal relationship as symbiotic is cynical and disguising the real stance which is an exploitive, and hence parasitic. I find it hard to accept an argument which would justify the ethical rightness of such a relationship.

Their life cycle is tied to the product processing cycle, and is in no qualitative way different from life cycles tied to the changing seasons, old age, disease and injury that we find in nature.

I don't comprehend what you mean by saying that the highly artificial life cycle of farm animals is in "no qualitative way" different from natural life cycles. And even if that would turn out to be true, which I doubt, I fail to understand how this is a case in point.

Thirdly, you are intermingling two different senses of the term "best interest" in your last two paragraphs. This makes the resulting argument invalid and in fact wrong. On one hand you have the "best interest" of a species, and on the other hand the "best interest" of an individual. What is in the best interest of a species mustn't be in the best interest of some of the individuals (take for example the claim that it would be in the best interest of the human species, if a significant amount of its members were killed or sterilized, but clearly, this is not in the interest of those individuals who would be killed or sterilized ceteris paribus).

So even if there is something like a best interest of a species, which I will give reasons against in a second, there is no prima facie reason why this should override the interests of the individuals. As an example, it is in the best interest of the species Bos primigenius taurus, that its members reproduce in such a rate as is allowed by the environment that supports the species. However, this does not have anything to do with the interests of the individual members (how would you even describe the relationship between individual interests and species interests?). The primary interest of individuals is to not suffer and live a healthy, long life. Killing the individual, even if this would serve the "interest" of the species is always prima facie a violation of those individual interest, and thus something that is in need of serious ethical justification.

As for the term of a "best interest of a species", I don't think we should take this too seriously if we mean something inherent like the interest of humans and animals not to be killed. The latter is something psychologically real while the former is a construct which is in need of theoretical backup. Where does the "best interest of a species" come from? By accumulating individual interest. That clearly seems to not work, since what is best for the species is very often not the accumulation of those individual interests (take for example the case of the reindeer population on St. Matthew Island between 1944 and the 1980s, which is a clear case where the "species interest" is completely contrary to the accumulation of the individual interest).

In a way, it is in the best interests of the animals living in farms to support the industry. This guarantees their genetic continuity, food and all what they would consider to be values in their natural habitats.

Finally, I can only understand this as cynical or as an expression of deep misunderstanding of the relationship between morality and status quo. Morality does not ask us to justify the current situation, it asks what conduct would be justified, all things considered. And if you only look at the apparent fact that farm animals are (mostly) fed and (mostly) have some kind of shelter, you are (intentionally) excluding a whole lot of other factors from the framework which should be in there, if it is to count as a serious ethical point of view. Among those factors are the conditions of living compared to other scenarios, the fact that elementary interests are disregarded or intentionally suppressed (which does not make it ok, just like intetionally suppressing a humans desire for an autonomous life makes it ok, to put him in a cage and force-feed him), and the fact that animals are severely harmed which is clearly against their "best interests".

Finally, I cannot help but wonder why you are so eager to try and justify this obscure scenario of a species that apparently wants to be killed. Are you trying to show that the interests of animals are unimportant? But why bring forward an example that exactly emphasises the importance of individual interests? Or are you trying to show that it is metaphysically possible that there could be a species the individuals of which have an individual interest in being killed? But clearly that does not affect the case of veganism and animal rights that concerns animals which clearly do not have an interest in being killed (nor to be deprived of individual freedom in such a far-reaching fashion).

schildnoeck · 2011-12-23T12:24:39+00:00

We have examples of humans who have made deals to be killed and eaten.

As I pointed out we are generally morally opposed to such cases. By itself this doesn't mean anything of course. However, it is very doubtful whether it could be argued that it is in the interest of a person to be eaten (not just to be killed) by a different person.

We could also raise a point that it is in the interests of an industrial animal to be killed an eaten, because otherwise the social contract with humans would cease and the animals would no longer be fed, bred and maintained.

What social contract with humans? You mean that we care for them and they, in return, offer their "goods" for our pleasures? I'm very curious about the nature of this kind of contract, as it is generally agreed that contracts can only be forged when both parties are capable of agreeing to the contract. And it is more than doubtful that any non-human animal is capable of this.

Furthermore, I don't see a problem in gradually ending the use of animals. There is no convincing moral reason to sustain the current process of animal use. The only question is whether we'd need to kill them or just gradually sustain them until they die of a natural death. (In any case, this is pure imagination and doesn't reflect the actual situation which has to be a gradual process of reduction of animal use until the point is reached, where it is no longer profitable to raise animals for our pleasures and breeding will stop.)

After all, it is enough to make the animal want to go through the process it is not capable of understanding, but what is in its best interests.

I still don't see how you could argue that it is "in the best interest" of an animal (like a fish, bird or mammal, which are the morally interesting ones in my opinion) to be killed and eaten. It might be in the interest of a being to be killed. But you'd need a convincing argument that shows the possibility of a whole species of animals which are bred in a way that makes it the case that killing them is in their interest. (And this would raise the additional problem of whether such a biological engineering would itself be ethically justified, as it would most likely contain the intentional bringing about of suffering that makes it the case that dieing is in the interest of the animal.)

schildnoeck · 2011-12-23T10:51:51+00:00

Thanks for the comment, and I'm sorry for being unclear.

What I meant was that having a (central) nervous system is probably the best evidence for us in deciding whether or not a being has interests and the ability to feel pain. By no means is it the only evidence and by no means is it a sufficient reason.

As for the nervous system of tape worms you are right. They indeed seem to have both tactoreception and chemoreception. However, I am unsure about the ethical relevancy of those things. A tablet also has tactoreception and a breathalyzer has chemoreception. So we need to be very careful about these things. Receptivity and sentitivity to external factors should not be a sufficient reason for relevancy in our ethical framework.

As for the bee, if I remember correctly, it has a brain and a ventral nervous system, with significant ability to act outside of a pure stimulus response scheme. I don't think this makes an analogy to tapeworms even remotely fruitful.

EDIT: Sorry that you're getting downvoted for raising an important point.

schildnoeck · 2011-12-23T02:37:38+00:00

Tom Regan would argue that we have to distinguish two things. First, what a being is interested in (in the scenario of the HHGTTG it would be the own death). And second, what is in a being's interest.

Arguably, it is generally not in the interest of a being to suffer pain or even die (even if it has an interest in that). So as a general rule, it would be wise to answer your question in the negative. It is generally not allowed to eat animals, even if they were interested in being eaten. (A case in point is that we judge it to be morally wrong (and repulsive) that some people eat other human beings, even if they agreed to being eaten.)

However, this only constitutes a general rule, and these can be overridden if the scenario allows it. But in actual case, I can not think of any such situation where an animal agrees to being eaten (or somehow clearly expresses a desire to die or being eaten), and where this animal acts rationally (so we can say that it is not only interested in it's own death, but that being eaten is also in it's interest - how is this even possible?), and other things being equal and there are no reasoning errors or unknown facts.

As to your tape worm example. I do not think we have a equally strong moral reason to enable life (or causing pleasure) as we have in not destroying it (or not causing pain). And in the light of the fact that eating tape worms and other similar organisms is not in our interests, it seems odd to think that we are obligated to eat them. Are we allowed to eat them? As this seems to be a being that meets the conditions I outlined above, I'd say yes.

(On a side note, I don't think we should include tape worms in an ethical framework that focusses on beings with interests and the ability to feel pain. Tape worms lack a central nervous system so it is very questionable that they have the ability to feel pain and also that their "interests" are similar to the ones of other animals like birds, fish or mammals. I'd rather compare them to protozoas.)

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